Explanation: Slice
Jupiter
from pole to pole, peel back its outer layers
of clouds,
stretch them onto a flat surface ... and for all your
trouble you'd end up with something that looks a lot like this.
Scrolling right will reveal the full picture,
a color mosaic of
Jupiter
from the Cassini spacecraft.
The mosaic is actually a single frame from a fourteen frame
movie constructed from image data recorded by Cassini
during its
leisurely
flyby of the solar system's largest
planet late last year.
The engaging movie approximates
Jupiter's cloud motions over 24 jovian rotations.
To make it, a series of observations covering
Jupiter's complete circumference
60 degrees north and south
of the equator were combined in an animated
cylindrical
projection map of the planet.
As in the familiar rectangular-shaped wall maps of the
Earth's surface, the
relative sizes and shapes of features are
correct near the equator but become progressively more distorted
approaching the polar regions.
In the Cassini movie, which also features guest appearances
by moons Io and
Europa, the smallest cloud structures
visible at the equator are about 600 kilometers across.
(Note: Downloading a large
gif or
quicktime version of
the movie may take 15 minutes or longer.)